Well, I left Gentoo about a year ago when I let etc-update get behind and had some other problems. I installed Ubuntu and it was love at first sight, but I have had too many struggles along the way. I cannot do a apt-get update over My ISP without a SSH tunnel, and adept-updater totally borks the whole system if the internet connection gets interrupted. Since I'm on dialup, the connection gets interrupted a LOT. I now have 6 Kubuntu boxes here that will not upgrade or install anything all because of the stupid adept-updater. Ive had way too may re-installs, so, tomorrow I'm going to a faster connection to do a Gentoo install on my 850MHz laptop. If I like (I'm sure I will), I'll do it on my smoking fast desktop too, then the others next. Sometimes it seems that several gentoo boxes are a lot to keep up with, but ubuntu has too many major issues, and I get no response out of the forum, so HERE I COME!!!_________________I have it my way no matter what, and I build it every time, 'cause they don't sell them that way. A genius is always has what he wants, but a rich person does not. I'm a rich kid with no money! That's why I chose Gentoo...

Try ##otw on freenode (irc), or the gentoo mailinglists - you can get excellent support there. These forums serve as an excellent resource and the origination of otw these days._________________

shickapooka wrote:

i think they programmed [otw] based on a right-wing jewish-nigger-nazi, his gay, retarded, left-wing love slave with webbed feet, and their three headed cat that poops uncontrollably. the cat is also an apple fanboy

i think they programmed [otw] based on a right-wing jewish-nigger-nazi, his gay, retarded, left-wing love slave with webbed feet, and their three headed cat that poops uncontrollably. the cat is also an apple fanboy

I don't really see that the forum is getting stale. I see a good amount of daily activity and a bunch of users that still want to help one another. The popularity and utility of the forum can be built back up to what it used to be._________________“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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Why? ##otw is always steaming with intellect. I'm sure they'd be glad to help _________________“And even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.”– Hillary Clinton, Jan. 21, 2010

I agree. I don't see the decline to be as vast as others have suggested. I'm surely not discrediting the IRC channels either, as they serve many purposes as well. However, I believe that the forum beautifully acts a centralised collection of information regarding Gentoo, as well as being an excellent medium for users to ask for and receive help with Gentoo-related or GNU/Linux-related issues._________________“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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I agree. I don't see the decline to be as vast as others have suggested.

Kalos, you've been on the forums for just over a year...

The forums are still great, but they definitely have declined in the past few years._________________“And even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.”– Hillary Clinton, Jan. 21, 2010

I understand that I'm a late-comer to the fora, and that by comparison to years past, there may a noticeable shift in activity. The effort should be to find what caused this decline, and then to address those issues accordingly. Having been on other fora, though, I definitely wouldn't say that this community is in a state of disarray that constitutes "stale[ness]."_________________“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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I've been finding a lot of the newer support questions to be extremely obscure or "one off" issues (meaning, there's something in their setup they forgot to mention whether it's bad hardware or a not-so-benign hack).

Perhaps it's just fewer newcomers or they're all just looking at the FAQs and not posting..._________________Intel Core i7 2700K@ 4.1GHz/HD3000 graphics/8GB DDR3/180GB SSDWhat am I supposed watching?

My egosearch was always around 350-400 posts, now its under 250. Either users are smarter or with my 5 year old (or more) set up, I'm not able to keep current to help with todays problems.

Both the forums and IRC have seasonal peaks at the beginning of the school year (students getting new equipment) and at Christmas, when users try to install on there just replaced system.

I don't think any of this reflects on the popularity of Gentoo. It has got easier to install and maintain since I did my current install in January 2003, using 1.4-rc4 stage 1._________________Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Those are some good insights about the seasonal peaks. Also, with 18000+ posts, I don't think you're unable to help with today's problems. _________________“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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I agree. I don't see the decline to be as vast as others have suggested. I'm surely not discrediting the IRC channels either, as they serve many purposes as well. However, I believe that the forum beautifully acts a centralised collection of information regarding Gentoo, as well as being an excellent medium for users to ask for and receive help with Gentoo-related or GNU/Linux-related issues.

I haven't really seen any decline either... I still get none of my posts answered, but they're usually dumb anyhow. I have noticed myself posting much more than in the past. I'm a lot more confident now that I write my own ebuilds, patches, and bootstrap scripts, as well as make my own livecd with catalyst... I guess I actually don't use gentoo anymore kind of a home brew instead... I still use portage... but that's soon to change as well I believe.

Edit: I have no clue what caused me to ramble so far off topic._________________Steve - Semper Fi